


This World That We're Living In...

by SereneSorrow



Series: What World [2]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Dimension Travel, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Shinichi weekend 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:33:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23324797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SereneSorrow/pseuds/SereneSorrow
Summary: Trapped in a world not his own, Shinji attempts to adjust to his new place.Or:Shinji makes a mistake, broods over it, and has a heck of a time trying to fix it.~Things may have gotten worse for our hero.
Relationships: Hirako Shinji & Kurosaki Ichigo
Series: What World [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1677808
Comments: 1
Kudos: 55
Collections: ShinIchi Weekend 2020





	This World That We're Living In...

**Author's Note:**

> ShinIchi Weekend 2020 - Day 1: Time Travel/Dimension Travel AU
> 
> To be honest... I DO NOT remember reading/watching anything canon that had a lot of Starrk talking even though I previously thought I had... (I have really got to reread this thing!) but apparently he speaks a lot of Spanish? So... I had him say 'Yes, there is nothing there' in Spanish, but I used google translate, so if it's wrong let me know.
> 
> I was also absurdly tired while editing this, so if I left any glaringly obvious errors let me know and I'll go over it again. -_-'

Shinji leaned forward against the dark, rusted bars of his cell with a sigh. He wanted to bang his head against them. He had gotten used to standing here, with his arms stuck through the bars and leaning against the cross bar just because there really wasn't anything else to sit or lean against in the small, rough, empty square space. There was barely enough room for him to lay out on the floor to sleep without his head and feet bumping into the walls on each side of the space. What had he been thinking, trying to 'talk' to Aizen?

It wasn't the captain or lieutenant, nor the monstrous butterfly, it had been the... the student. The one who'd first greeted him. Shinji had taken a chance because he hadn't fully realized the situation he was in here, despite ample proof to the contrary. How could he even for a moment have thought that the student-version of Aizen wouldn't be Aizen just because he was a young student?

Aizen was Aizen, and no matter how many paths he took they ultimately led to the same end. This entire world full of monstrous forms and maniacal would-be overlords proved that. As well as the fact that the boy had even survived this long, Shinji was fairly sure that of the group he had hidden with that first night he'd spent on this world, this student-Aizen was the only one who hadn't yet been killed. That alone should have been enough to show Shinji that the boy was more cunning than he appeared.

"Idiot. I'm a Goddamn idiot." Shinji muttered to himself again, his dry voice grating in the tomb-like silence of his prison.

Despite that familiar look in his eyes that Shinji had recognized right away, he had still been lured into a false sense of security by amiable acceptance of his words and student-Aizen's 'earnest worry' for his even younger counterparts. They had been standing in the middle of an open space, in one of the fallen cities full of those impossible 'sky scrapers' where he'd foolishly thought that he would see or sense anyone approaching them, when a trap had sprung. Shinji had been truly surprised by the look of excited achievement on student-Aizen's face as the kido had paralyzed him and drained his reiryoku in a dizzying flood so fast that his head was spinning as he fell to his knees.

Face down on the shattered paving without the strength to even twitch his fingers toward the hilt of his zanpakutō he shuddered as his sight slowly resettled. Shinji had barely heard the words student-Aizen spoke as he gloated over his victory, seeing only the young man's feet approaching close enough for him to grab if he could just move.

"Really Hirako-taicho, I would have thought that those rebels would have taught you better than this. Hasn't that orange-haired half-breed mongrel hybrid told you about me?" Student-Aizen asked him as Shinji gasped desperately for breath against the reiryoku drain that had made every fiber of his body ache.

Even now, he was still recovering from the drain and it had left a dull soreness in his muscles and joints that he couldn't work away with massaging, stretches or pacing. Of course sleeping on this hard stone certainly wouldn't help, he woke up more sore each day than the last. and it had been days at least that he had been trapped here. Maybe even weeks, it was impossible to keep track in this dim cell. There was no natural light filtering in from anywhere and seals painting the walls outside his cell and too far for him to reach were keeping him from gathering enough reiatsu for a kidō spell of his own but glowing dimly enough to just allow him to see the conditions of his prison. His eyes were well adjusted, but it left him constantly drowsy and he would have spent most of his imprisonment asleep if it weren't so damn uncomfortable. Instead he tried to keep himself up on his feet to stave off his false exhaustion, keep himself moving so that he would be more alert just in case.

Shinji desperately missed his Sakanade. Student-Aizen had taken her away from him, leaving him here entirely alone. He couldn't even talk to her, there was only the thinnest thread of reiryoku attaching them to each other, only enough for him to know that she hadn't been destroyed and for her to know that he wasn't dead. If there was anything that she could have done without him she would have, he knew that to be true, but she couldn't even call out to anyone but him.

He wondered if she would call to Ichigo or one of the Arrancars if she could. Thoughts taking a dark turn he wondered if they would even bother to save him, or if his weakness was too much of a risk for them. Shinji wasn't even supposed to be here, and they hadn't found much use for him in their 'Aizen hunting'. He was nearly the weakest among them, and they had long since worked out the best strategies and refined their teamwork to peak efficiency. A new player integrating into their force now was likely more trouble than it was worth, though they had been finding things for him to do, scouting and keeping watch while they slept. Marking out maps with the pulses of not quite reiatsu but something that seemed to originate from the same space as the inside of a garganta that they had taught him to recognize as the arrival of another Aizen.

The numbers there was astonishing. Shinji knew from a report a few decades ago from a small research team funded by the Kasumiōji clan that 'other worlds' were theorized to exist, but seeing proof of so many of them was a staggering prospect. Ichigo's small army had already encountered hundreds of Aizens, and they had no reason to believe that their summoning process was anywhere near finished. Shinji had a difficult time grasping the enormity of their resolve to carry out this war against one man again and again, he'd known that there was something suspicious about his lieutenant but he never could have imagined that Aizen-fukutaicho would become such a creature, in every lifetime.

A door creaked and Shinji's head jerked up, taking in an unexpected sight as it approached him. This man wasn't the young student-Aizen that he was expecting, the only one that Shinji had thought knew of his presence here. Instead it was an Aizen who's hair fell in waves three inches past his shoulders that was kept back with a headband, a robe that seemed to be a dark color stitched with constellation designs covering him head to toe. Shinji had no idea what to expect from this man, other than the same unpleasantness that he had now learned to expect from every Aizen.

"Fascinating." The man murmured to himself, his eyes bright with curiosity as he inspected Shinji like a bug under glass.

Shinji was determined not to say anything, he didn't want to satisfy that curiosity. Instead he stood back from the bars and out of arms reach, reluctantly waiting for more. As the silence stretched out and Shinji and the man observed each other Shinji got the frustrating feeling that starry-Aizen was learning a lot more about him than the reverse.

"This world really is full of dead creatures, beings from beyond the veil. Souls that consumed one another and merged into a single being and what in another world might be called angels." starry-Aizen continued to himself as his eyes raked up and down from Shinji's head to his toes.

Shinji edged farther back and away from the bars as the man came closer, wary of what the man would say next, and kept eyes on him the entire time. Eyes that widened when the man walked right through the metal as though the bars weren't there, almost like the ability spirit beings had to pass through material in the living world, but the bars weren't made of simple kishi or Shinji could have done the same himself, no somehow the man had circumvented both the wall and the Kidō holding off all reiatsu manipulation within the prison.

"Fascinating, but there is a thread here. A part of you is missing. Curious, I'll have to follow it and see where it goes." Starry-Aizen said as he trailed around Shinji in a circle, fingers twitching in a way that Shinji really didn't like.

With the words, that Shinji knew were referring to his zanpakutō, starry-Aizen moved those questing fingers through the air and with a decisive motion turned them as though he held a key. Shinji felt a soul-wrenching tug, his connection to Sakanade screamed at him briefly and stole his breath so completely that he thought his lungs had collapsed. He didn't realize when he fell, but Shinji panted for air on his knees after starry-Aizen let go, and tried to re-compose himself. He didn't know if this particular Aizen was aware of what was on the other end of that thread, or what he would do to Sakanade if he found her.

"Truly fascinating." Starry-Aizen repeated, his hungry eyes staring down at Shinji as though his secrets would be pried out of him until there was nothing left for the man to devour.

Shinji didn't say anything, knowing that it wouldn't help if he talked. His eyes tracked Aizen's movements until the man was finished with his perusal and left the cell again, and Shinji listened to his footsteps vanish back the way he'd come. With a sigh of relief that he knew was temporary Shinji got to his feet and walked shakily back to the bars, making double-sure that the man wasn't still here before he allowed himself to even infinitesimally relax.

Time passed slowly now that he was worried about what this other Aizen might be up to, before now he had only needed to worry why student-Aizen was keeping him alive here and what he wanted. Now there was another Aizen who knew of his imprisonment and seemed keen on studying him, and this one was from a world that seemed significantly different from the one that Shinji had come from. His talk about dead creatures from beyond some 'veil' and 'angels' was nothing that Shinji had ever heard before and it gave him a lot to worry about. Any Aizen who found something new to be curious about was dangerous, and Shinji knew that he wanted to be a subject of his experiments even less than he wanted to be a prisoner.

When it came, the wrenching yank in his chest -in his soul- came without warning. Shinji was on his knees and clawing at the floor as he hunched over, gasping for breaths that weren't enough to dispel the heart-rending feeling. It was his connection to Sakanade again, he could feel her being pulled apart and toyed with. That starry-Aizen must have found her... must be doing something to her while he was trapped here and helpless. It wasn't Shinji who was the subject of his experiment, it was his zanpakutou that the man had the most interest in.

The pain in his chest only grew more intense, a searing burn that raised bile in his throat and blinded him to the cell around him. His ears were ringing so loudly that he couldn't even hear Sakanade's screams as they faded into quieter cries as she seemingly was pulled farther and farther away from him. Shinji didn't know what starry-Aizen was doing, or how he was doing it, but the pain was more than he could handle. Blindly passing out in a puddle of his own vomit was the last thing that Shinji remembered.

***  
***

The clatter of youthful footsteps outside his cell woke him, and Shinji realized that he was sitting with his back against the wall farthest from the bars with his legs straight out in front of him. There was no memory clear in his mind of how he had gone from laying on his face to sitting propped against the wall but he was too sore to care about the lapse in time and memory. His neck ached from the way he had been sleeping and his vision was blurry, but it was nothing compared to the throbbing ache hollowing out his chest. He felt completely empty, and no food, nothing at all could ever make him feel full again. The vomit on his shirt had dried, as had the puddle on the ground not far from his feet, but Shinji didn't really care about that as the boy who had trapped him here came into view.

Student-Aizen paused and looked him over, apparently not expecting him to be in this condition, and Shinji didn't bother explaining himself to his enemy. He didn't care what student-Aizen thought of him or his condition, he didn't care about anything and he wouldn't give this boy the satisfaction of hearing him ask for protection against another Aizen. No, he just glared back at the boy's observing gaze as it took in every detail of the room and his prisoner, let him figure it out for himself.

"Someone was here." He stated with a cold, dispassionate look that Shinji was getting used to. "Who? What did they do?"

Shinji ignored the questions, he wasn't interested in satisfying student-Aizen's curiosity and he was even less interested in getting involved with an argument between two of these traitors. He glared back at the young man and kept his mouth shut, but student-Aizen didn't seem to be discouraged. He didn't take Shinji's silence seriously, instead he flicked his fingers at the wards around the cell in a way that was entirely too reminiscent of starry-Aizen's movements. At the motion Shinji felt an electric pain race through his body, but compared to the hole in his soul where he thought that Sakanade should be this pain was nothing. Outwardly he didn't even twitch at the feeling, thoughts still wandering over what could have become of his zanpakutō spirit.

Aizen wasn't to be ignored though, even this young version of him, in fact he was even more impatient because of his youth and turned the electricity into a thousand blades twisting cuts into his flesh. Shinji felt reality bend around him as student-Aizen's suddenly drawn sword hypnotized him, and then the sense of wrongness was gone, that feeling of unease smoothing out into comfortable certainty that everything was back to normal.

Shinji blinked, his office looked a bit odd, as though someone had moved things around. With a frown he stood up from his desk and started moving everything from cushions to candles back into the places they belonged. There were plants on the windowsill, he didn't remember where they'd come from but he shrugged and moved on.

_'Didn't I have a record player?'_ He wondered to himself, but of course it was against the rules to have a record player from the living world here, he wouldn't have something like that.

He could have sworn that he'd left more paperwork behind yesterday but the stacks on his desk were gone. Shaking his head he called out for his lieutenant to enter as a knock sounded against the door and he felt the familiar reiatsu waiting patiently outside.

"Ah, Aizen-fukutaicho, did ya' do more of my paperwork again?" Shinji asked the young man.

_'Does he look younger than the last time I saw him?'_ Shinji shook off the thought because that was ridiculous, even if the younger man's hair was a bit shorter than he thought he remembered it and his glasses were just slightly different in shape, he was just imagining things.

"I just thought you could use a bit of a break today, if you remember we need to write out that report on the intruder you saw here in your office just recently?" Aizen-fukutaicho replied like a good, dutiful, little lieutenant.

"Right!" Shinji exclaimed, latching onto the explanation with relief.

That certainly explained why things were out of place, Shinji had confronted that intruder yesterday. He must have moved things around while he was searching for whatever it was he had come for. Taking a seat at his familiar desk again while Aizen-fukutaicho sat across from him and pulled a sheet of paper closer, Shinji thought over what he remembered of the intruder.

"He was 186 cm tall, and brown haired, about your shade actually. It was three inches past his shoulders though, and he had on a headband that matched the dark color of his clothing, which was a very dark blue or at least it wasn't quite black. The clothing itself was strange because it was covered with embroidered constellations that I don't believe I've ever seen in the sky, and it had a tight collar and covered him down to the floor." Shinji watched Aizen-fukutaicho writing out the description and frowned, wondering why he felt as though he should stop talking.

"He wasn't a shinigami, but he had some kind of power that I'm not familiar with, it was very unpleasant and I think that he left with whatever it was he came looking for. I don't think I managed to slow him down any... but I can't remember-" Shinji had kept speaking despite his strange doubts, but now he broke off, staring at the intense look in his lieutenant's eyes.

This wasn't right, something... just wasn't right. Shinji shook his head, but he just couldn't get past that intensity, he would almost think that his lieutenant wasn't the same man. Impossible, Shinji was staring right at him, and his reiatsu _was_ Aizen-fukutaicho's.

"Is that all?" Aizen-fukutaicho asked coldly, startling Shinji.

"Ah, yes, I believe so-" The feeling of normalcy disappeared in an instant, and Shinji lept to his feet and swayed before he stumbled back against the wall he'd been sitting against just minutes ago, breathing hard as he stared across his cell at his jailer.

Student-Aizen stood up from where he'd been sitting just outside the bars and across from Shinji, resheathing his sword as he drew himself up importantly. There was a smug and successful glint in his eyes for a moment before he wiped it away.

"Don't worry Hirako-taicho, I'll take care of that man." Student-Aizen said with the same cold tone that made Shinji's gut clench with nerves.

The ridiculous false reassurance of student-Aizen's parting words was the last he ever heard from the boy. It served him right, Shinji would later gloat to himself, in this particular case not at all feeling guilty for enjoying someone's death. He dozed more often and with less reluctance, even as the days stretched out before him. Shinji wouldn't know how long he was trapped in the cell alone, before anyone else found him.

***  
***

Glancing up from where he leaned uncomfortably against a wall, Shinji listened to the sudden rumble of thunder. No, it wasn't thunder, as it crashed again Shinji realized that it was someone strong literally bashing away at solid rock. Someone was outside this place he was being kept in, and was trying very hard to get in. Forcing himself to move despite the pounding headache, lightheaded sensation and pain in his stomach, Shinji approached the only entrance to his cell.

The walls farther away from his cell cracked with a loud grinding of stone, and then dust billowed down the short hallway, making Shinji cough roughly. Tense, he watched the farthest point of the hall that he could see from the bars of his cell, until bright orange locks caught his eye. He could actually see Ichigo's approach even though he was moving impossibly fast, something about Shinji's confusingly altered state at the moment was able to track him. In an instant Ichigo was standing in front of the bars and Shinji stared hopelessly back at him, his feelings of both emptiness and having given up fully displayed in his slumped posture.

Ichigo, not the beastly form of his Resurrección but the man dressed in ragged scraps, blinked wearily back at him and then raised his hands to wrap around the bars between them. He flooded them with his reiatsu and then simply ripped them out of the wall. Shinji pulled his arms away from the bars just in time and didn't hesitate to step outside the cell, regardless of how he was feeling he wasn't going to pass up a chance to escape from this place, if only because it was what he would have once desired to do.

He didn't make it halfway down the hallway. One minute he was struggling to push onward while Ichigo hovered silently at his shoulder, and the next it seemed as though the whole world tipped sideways, only this time he had no way of righting himself as he fell.

***  
***

The next thing he remembered was waking up in a pile of Arrancar, bodies on all sides of him and a warm heat in his constricted stomach that told him he'd probably been fed soup or something while he was unconscious. Blinking groggy eyes as he turned his head, Shinji took in the sleeping bodies around him. They were closer than usual, he'd gotten accustomed to being a part of the general sprawl of bodies but most nights Ichigo was the only one who leaned into him so heavily. Now it seemed like everyone who could reach him was pressing a hand, arm or leg against him where they could. Despite the fact that they were hollows, Shinji felt reassured, not threatened at all. Starrk, Nel and even Tesla were all right there with him, so there was no chance that any Aizen could sneak up on him while he was sleeping without waking _one_ of them first.

Struggling out of the protective knot of bodies that he recognized as nearly _all_ of the stronger of the Arrancar he'd come to know, he wobbled out of the building to relieve himself. It was as he was on his way back that he nearly collided with Ichigo, the man looking worried and rushed as he came around a corner. They wound up steadying each other, and Shinji noticed that they were both unhealthily thin now. Shinji had gained a few scars of his own but nothing that matched the long slashes that crossed each other on all sides of Ichigo's torso, and he had been forced to start wearing the mix and match clothing everyone else wore, his own clothes long since shredded beyond use.

"You shouldn't go off alone like that. You don't even have your sword." Ichigo scolded him, but nervously, hands checking Shinji as though he thought he would find an injury.

Where Shinji would have gotten any new wounds in the minute he'd been out of sight he didn't know, but he was sure with the way Ichigo was acting now that he had already been thoroughly checked over for even the smallest scratch. Might as well have been checked anyway, because he was wearing different clothes that weren't vomit-stained.

"If everyone's asleep here it's gotta be mostly safe." Shinji pointed out, trying not to think on the missing piece of his soul.

Looking back at him, Ichigo clearly knew what he was avoiding and pulled him back into the building quietly. He was still a bit out of it, so it wasn't until they were inside that he realized they were holding hands, but it didn't seem as weird as Shinji thought it should have. They stopped in the silence, the walls an illusion of greater security that nonetheless helped them both stay calm.

"We couldn't find your zanpakutō." Ichigo admitted grimly, to Shinji's dismay.

"If the boy who had me locked up in there doesn't have it, than the one dressed in stars probably does." Shinji said glumly, wondering if he would actually get it back or if his days were numbered, without a zanpakutō he wouldn't last long in this world even assuming that starry-Aizen didn't do something to Sakanade that destroyed them both.

"We'll go look again tomorrow. If you're feeling better you can help." Ichigo decided, a frown marring his lips and brow, and then pulled him back toward the sleeping arrangements.

It didn't feel as strange as it used to, being tucked into the pile of bodies by the redheaded not-Shiba. Maybe it was the time he'd spent in that cell alone and kicking himself for being separated from these warriors, or maybe it was this new hole inside him that felt less empty when they were all pressed close together like this. Shinji didn't know what made it better, but Ichigo pushing him down into the middle space with hands on his chest as though he thought Shinji would try to escape was actually kind of perfect in some primitive sense.

Ichigo's hands on his chest were replaced with his head, the weight of his body settling in against Shinji's torso was almost natural and he felt a sense of relief as he wrapped an arm around Ichigo's lower back. His eyes drifted closed again before he had time to realize that he'd turned his head and buried his nose in Ichigo's hair.

***  
***

Searching for Sakanade turned out to be a lot more difficult than anyone expected, because this particular version of Aizen was apparently unlike any that Ichigo had seen before. Shinji was with Starrk and Nel today because of another battle against one of the hollowfied Aizens that had taken Ichigo and Grimmjow's attention, but they were confident that they could spare a few hands from that battle to help him search.

At this point, they were nearly down to wandering in circles and hoping that they stumbled over a hideout of some kind. They had started in the area that his cell had been located in, though now it was reduced to a sunken pile of rubble thanks to Ichigo's frustration and anger. Shinji was starting to despair of ever finding his zanpakutō, the three of them were just picking over the same empty ruins that they had searched several times before.

"We need to think about this more. Aizen's a planner, he makes sure he won't lose ground before he makes his move. He wouldn't have approached me in the first place if he didn't have a well secured place to retreat to once he had what he wanted." Shinji thought out loud, realizing just how hopeless he'd let himself become.

"So what are the best places to hide?" Nel asked, then jumped in realization of an answer to her own question and dashed off in another direction.

"We should follow her?" Shinji asked Starrk, since she hadn't actually said a word to that effect and the other Arrancar wasn't moving.

"Si." He sighed and shrugged, apparently just tired at the _thought_ of running that fast.

Shinji snickered, the wolf hollow was like an old man sometimes, even Yamamoto had more energy. Noticing his own mood raising, Shinji halted, looking around. It was like he could feel something again, almost as though Sakanade wasn't as lost to him as he'd thought. Starrk looked back at him from a few paces ahead and then fired a cero in the direction Nel had disappeared off to. When she reappeared, pouting as though he'd ruined her fun, he just nodded in Shinji's direction.

"I think she's that way." Shinji said with increasing amazement.

He turned and pointed to the right of the direction Nel had been heading, and then the two of them both ended up holding him back from the direction he was trying to go. Literally, in fact they both had a hand clamped hard around his arms, making him strain against the vice-like grips.

"What are you doing? We need to go that way." Shinji insisted, trying to shrug them both off simultaneously.

"We shouldn't go that way, it won't be over there." Nel tried to steer him back in the direction that she'd been heading but Shinji wouldn't be moved.

"Si, no hay nada allí." Starrk agreed, more insistent than Shinji had ever seen him outside of a battle.

"What are you talking about? I can feel it, we need to go over there!" Shinji growled, finally ripping his arm free of Nel's hands but Starrk's grip only tightened.

"There's nothing over there!" Nel waved her hands wildly as she spoke, in an obvious 'I'm hiding something' tell.

"There is, Sakanade is, and if there's something else over there that you're hiding I don't care. I'm going over there and getting my zanpakutō back from Aizen, whether you come with me or not!" Shinji insisted, the growl in his own voice was taking on a strange tone that he wasn't familiar with, but Nel was looking more nervous with every word.

"I-I'll just go see how Ichigo is doing! He should come too! You wait here and I'll see if he can come!" She was nodding emphatically as she spoke and Shinji didn't have time to get a word in before she was dashing off again.

Turning to look at Starrk, Shinji tried again to shake off the man's grip, but he wouldn't budge. With another growl Shinji turned back to the direction he wanted to go, straining like a dog at the end of a leash. He needed to go over there, he just knew it, but Starrk absolutely refused to release him. Standing completely still and yawning when Shinji punched him in the shoulder of the arm that held him back.

Minutes turned into hours, grinding away at Shinji's nerves as he struggled to get free of the man's grip, until he was panting and just about collapsed from the strain. Starrk sank down with him, still holding his arm loosely but with enough attention to tighten his hold at any time if Shinji moved to escape again. Finally, when Shinji thought that he was going to tear out of his own skin somehow just to run over into that unknown distance, Ichigo and several others arrived.

Nel was leading them over, still bloodstained and dirty from their fight and looking tired and grim, and Shinji couldn't hold back the enraged snarl at the sight of the redhead. It seemed that nothing really happened without Ichigo's approval, and Shinji was going to be furious if the only reason he'd been made to wait was because they needed Ichigo's _permission_.

"You really are sure that you feel Sakanade in that direction?" Ichigo was stating an observation more than asking a question, and Shinji grudgingly nodded at the younger man, too put out to be cordial.

Ichigo ran a hand through his messy hair and sighed, looking in that direction himself. Shinji didn't know what the problem was but he was more than done with waiting. Dragging Starrk back to his feet took a considerable chunk of time and attention however, and gave Ichigo time to make his decisions, whatever those were.

"With our luck the way it is, we probably should have figured that would be where this star-guy is hiding." Ichigo finally announced in a tired, hopeless voice.

"But it's defended, hidden, no one should even be able to _sense_ it let alone find it!" Ggio cut in.

"And we can't find any trace of this version of Aizen. Shinji said that he walked right through bars made of modified Reishi, that means that he's completely incompatible with our kind of power, reiatsu and stuff like that. Whatever it is that _he_ uses, we're probably lucky that he hasn't managed to do anything with the device yet." Ichigo's words seemed to dampen all of the hollows spirits.

Shinji only had time to think _'device?'_ before Ichigo nodded at Starrk who released him immediately, and then they were all eight of them racing in the very direction that Shinji had been straining to go without even a signal to get them moving. Shinji had noticed them moving like this before, often in battle when there was no time for communication, and he had assumed that it was a product of long familiarity and desperation on the battlefield. Having come late to their war he had not himself been able to catch up to their unspoken communication, but suddenly he felt more in tune with them, somehow he had just _known_ when to start forward, falling in behind Ichigo and flanked by Starrk on the outside left and Findorr on the back right. He was farther back than he wanted to be, it was _his_ sword they were searching for, but something held him back when he considered moving forward to pace Ichigo evenly. Grimmjow and Nel were already there beside him, and Tesla was on the far right, with Ggio behind and to Shinji's left so that it seemed like a real formation that they'd instinctively dropped into. With a scowl, Shinji realized that he was actually tucked into the middle of their group, and he didn't like being considered the weakest.

He didn't have any more time to think about what was happening in his head right now, before long they were cresting a hill of rubble that had once been one of the towering buildings, which had crumbled over the top of another one. Below them was a round building, much shorter, that seemed to be some kind of huge arena. Shinji felt a sense of foreboding, as well as a feeling that told him to go away and never come near here again, and he wondered what kind of barriers and seals had been used to mask this place to such an effect.

"This is where we keep the thing that's drawing Aizen's to this world." Ichigo told him when he stepped up beside the redhead.

Shinji blinked and nodded while he stared down at the round building. He was itching to rush forward but he knew that he was at a disadvantage without his blade, and that he should let Ichigo and the others handle starry-Aizen while he hung back until he could secure Sakanade.

"I can't tell if he's in there, we'll sweep the whole area like we usually do and then regroup before we go in together. Then spread out as we go, come into the field from separate entrances, no one goes in alone but don't stick too close together." Ichigo decided, and they all paired up.

Shinji wasn't sure why he and Nel were a team, but he followed her through a complicated circuit of turns around the rubble surrounding the building and then back to the group. Everyone reported nothing out of the ordinary and no sight, scent, sound or sense of Aizen, so they entered through the heavy metal doors that Ichigo pried open and then split up along the wide open space of the entryway. It was hung with the decaying remains of colorful team flags, and there were shattered glass cases full of generic honors along all sides.

Following Nel through the wide, echoing hallways, Shinji mounted the stairs to a third level of the building and crouched to approach the railing of a balcony that appeared to run the entire length of the circular building. The seats were odd chairs in long lines all attached to each other like some of the hard chairs that he had seen in the office buildings in this world, so they remained intact and the place probably looked the same as it had before this world's destruction, sans a layer of dirt.

Peering over the railing, they both caught sight of the star-robed Aizen with his back to them. He was already speaking to Ichigo and Starrk, and behind him was a sight that Shinji supposed should have terrified him on principle. It probably would have before his recent imprisonment, but Shinji hadn't been feeling much of anything like he should since then, though he could maybe see why the large ball of glittering stones floating in the middle of the wide open expanse was something that his hollow allies would want to keep visitors from other worlds from getting too close to. All those stones, Hogyokus probably taken from every Aizen that had arrived in this world with one, lumped together into one giant mass and glowing with an inner light that looked alive. So that was how they were drawing in all of these Aizens, with his own magic rock. Despite the threat it posed and the mesmerizing sight it made, Shinji spared it only long enough of a look to identify what it was before his gaze was drawn to the single most important piece of the view before him. Clutched in starry-Aizen's left hand was Sakanade, unsheathed and tangled in some king of ribbon as he waved it around like a toy. Slowly, he realized that starry-Aizen was speaking loud enough to be heard in his excitement, and Shinji's eyes narrowed angrily as he tuned in to what the man was saying.

"This blade is incredible! It has a soul bound within it, a powerful one that is capable of bending the mind's very perception of reality!" Starry-Aizen went on and on with a wide smile displaying at his amazement over a zanpakutō.

Shinji was ready to spring over the railing and rush the man, but Nel held him back with one hand on his shoulder, silently suggesting that they watch and wait while the others fought. Gritting his teeth, Shinji watched through the narrow gap between the railing and the wall they knelt behind as Ichigo and Starrk rushed the enemy, angling in from both sides and attempting to force him away from the Hogyokus. Starry-Aizen didn't bother raising Shinji's zanpakutō to fight them off, instead he raised his empty hand and used something that was definitely not Kidō. The purple light was dark, and swept over, around and _through_ Ichigo as starry-Aizen aimed it at him. It made Ichigo shudder, and slowed him down, but whatever effect it was supposed to have didn't slow Ichigo down for long. He kept coming on and forced his way through the dark purple cloud-light, sweeping his own zanpakutō at the enemy and driving him back toward Starrk's blade, which cut through the man's shoulder before he vanished from sight.

Ggio and Findorr lept in from around the side of the Hogyokus, and caught the now invisible figure with a quick jab of Ggio's blade and a spray of blood. Reappearing and injured starry-Aizen waved a hand again and forced the two back, probably dangerously close to the Hogyokus, while the four remaining of Shinji's allies boxed him in. The smile was no longer on his face, he was hunched over and glaring around the circle of them approaching, and Shinji had waited long enough.

Vaulting over the railing and shunpo-ing closer he dropped down in the circle around starry-Aizen, Nel following close on his heels. With six, now eight of them around him Shinji was itching to just reach out and snatch Sakanade out of the thief's hand, but he waited. He knew that the man had to be more dangerous than he'd shown them so far, starry-Aizen wouldn't have survived this long if he wasn't.

Even so, they thought they had him cornered, when this Aizen suddenly took a two handed grip on Sakanade and they watched that purple light illuminate his blade from within. Eyes wide with alarm and pain racing through his soul at the vicious intrusion, Shinji lunged forward heedless of his own safety or the savage expression twisting his own features. He grabbed Sakanade's blade when it was turned toward him and felt his hands sliced open not from the blade but from the dark light consuming it, and forced himself forward until he could tighten his fingers around the hilt above starry-Aizen's hands.

"You fool! The potential of this blade must be explored! I must bring it back to my world, the things I could do with this power-" Starry-Aizen's words were fanatical, and Shinji snarled back in his face before he could complete his ravings.

"You aren't taking any part of my soul anywhere! Get your filthy hands off of her!" Shinji didn't care to listen to the next words coming from the man in front of him.

Tugging the blade toward himself while the man struggled against him, Shinji was trying to wrench the blade out of his grip when another swirl of dark purple light was suddenly expelled from the blade and bent the world around them. Shinji felt the sudden drain in his reiryoku as though he had just used his shikai, and the ultimate effect made everyone stumble. The sword came free in his hands though, and Shinji blinked at the empty space in front of him. As soon as they all righted themselves they searched all sides of the open battlefield around them but starry-Aizen was nowhere to be seen.

"We can't just leave this place undefended, if he can get in then who knows how many others we haven't seen can get here. The damage any Aizen could do with these Hogyokus is too much to risk." Ichigo said when they had finally completed a sweep of the entire building.

He had collapsed to sit on the overgrown grass a few feet away from the Hogyokus, not more than three feet away from where Shinji had been seated ever since starry-Aizen had vanished from sight. He hadn't been a part of the search, still reeling from the feeling of his blade and his shikai being used by someone else's power forced through his blade and soul, instead just collapsing and keeping a tight grip on his zanpakutō.

Not paying any more attention to Ichigo's musings aloud about forming a watch and guard rotation for this place, or whether they should begin camping here instead, Shinji's attention was directly on the final resolution of his recent ordeal. Student-Aizen was missing and probably dead, starry-Aizen had gotten away, but Sakanade was back where she belonged. Shinji ran his fingers over his blade with relief and concern for her condition. After the strange powers starry-Aizen had turned against them he was worried that something had damaged her but she didn't look broken, nicked, scratched, dented or bent, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Shinji was therefore startled when an enraged screech tore through his mind and pitched him into his inner world without ceremony, his body slumping to the ground over the blade as viscous white liquid poured out of his mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> So, suddenly I'm not sure how much I've actually seen of Aizen using hypnosis, so I may be off about how it works? I don't know...
> 
> Heh, once again, stuff with various Aizen's took more time than I was expecting... :)
> 
> ... and a clear cliffhanger... because I had SO much trouble writing this at all, and I only finished this on the 23rd... no way I could have written a second chapter in less than a week so yeah... this one's complete as is. I will say that I have two more parts I'm hoping to write for this story, so hopefully they'll be written sooner rather than later, but who knows... ~eh.


End file.
